Oren Klaff Quotes

Money is never a prize; it’s a commodity, a means for getting things done. Money simply transfers economic value from place to place so that people are able to work together.

Your pitch is first going to register in the target’s croc brain. And as we discussed in Chapter 1, the croc brain would like to ignore you. But if you are dynamic enough — giving new and novel information — you will capture the croc’s attention. Once that happens, the croc is going to have one of two primal reactions: • Curiosity and desire, or • Fear and dislike.

Make people feel like the idea is coming from them and they will place more value on it, believe it more deeply, adopt it more quickly, and remember it more easily.

If you are trying to win your target’s respect, attention, and money, he becomes the prize.

Instilling certainty is different from creating Status Alignment. With Alignment, your goal is to show the buyer you’re similar to them and make them instantly feel like you “get” them — whether you’re talking to a coal miner or a Fortune 500 CEO.

No pitch or message is going to get to the logic center of the other person’s brain without passing through the survival filters of the crocodile brain system first. And because of the way we evolved, those filters make pitching anything extremely difficult.

the addition of time pressure to a decision-making event reduces decision quality.

First, you don’t want your message to trigger fear alarms. And second, you want to make sure it gets recognized as something positive, unexpected, and out of the ordinary — a pleasant novelty.

The best way to find a Status Tip-Off is to interview three people who are the same level as the person you are trying to influence. What would they say to each other, to catch up on each other’s business, peer-to-peer?

You know what decision you want the buyer to make, but the more you push in that direction, the more they dig in, slow down, and change the agenda. They want to make their own decision on their own timeline. Buyers buy how they want to buy, not how you want to sell.

The prize frame is the window through which you look at the world that allows you to see yourself as the prize: The money has to earn you, not the other way around. You’re flipping the script.

Defiance and light humor are the keys to seizing power and frame control.

Narrative and analytical information does not coexist. It cannot; that’s simply impossible. The human brain is unable to be coldly analytical and warmly engaged in a narrative at the same time. This is the secret power of the intrigue frame. When your target drills down into technical material, you break that frame by telling a brief but relevant story that involves you. This is not a story that you make up on the spot; this is a personal story that you have prepared in advance and that you take to every meeting you have. Since all croc brains are pretty similar, you will not need more than one story because the intrigue it will contain will have the same impact on every audience. You need to be at the center of the story, which immediately redirects attention back to you. People will pause, look up, and listen because you are sharing something personal.

When you are reacting to the other person, that person owns the frame. When the other person is reacting to what you do and say, you own the frame.

If a guy is going to dominate you, let him dominate you on the price of something like a hand drawing in this case, something that doesn’t matter. If you find yourself in a similar situation (the day will come when this happens to you, too), then pick something abstract and start an intense price negotiation over it — and it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. The power of the person’s frame is rendered trivial, and the focus is back to you and what you want to do with the meeting.